Spider-Man Returns

Let me start off by saying this is the first Spider-Man game I have played since Spider-Man 3. I have not tried out the numerous games from Beenox representing the Spidey name (Web of Shadows, Shattered Dimensions, Friend or Foe, and Edge of Time). Maybe it is because of this that I enjoyed Amazing Spider-Man so much.

To me this is the true sequel to Spider-Man 2 (or 3, depending on which one you last played in the numbered series). The open world Manhattan feels fantastic. I had a great time simply swinging around the island of Manhattan as the witty webslinger. The swinging mechanic is smooth and the web rush injects a cinematic flair to the navigation on top of making it easier on the player to maneuver to specific locations. The zoomed in camera really gives the player a near-true sense of vertigo as they zip around the world and plummet to the street only to swing to safety at the last second. The dynamic missions dished out in the free roam world are nothing particularly exciting, but they make for a nice break from the typical story action.

Speaking of story, the narrative in this entry is better than I have seen to date. The dialogue seems to be well written, and the developers clearly slowed down the pace of the game to allow for the story to be told on it's own terms, instead of being spliced into horribly performed in-game mini-scenes.

Graphically the game looks, well, amazing. The webslinger looks better than ever in his latest entry; not only from a graphical standpoint, but with animation as well. Parker moves with a certain fluidity absent from the series for quite some time. While swinging around the city and web rushing from point to point, Spider-Man looks completely at home in his environment.

This fluidity carries over to the combat as well. The combat mechanics at work seem to be heavily borrowed from the smash hit Batman Arkham Asylum/City, which to be is not a bad thing at all. The combat lacks the rhythmic nature of the Arkham games, however that is made up for by the fact that the player is given the opportunity to truly feel like Spider-Man in combat. Spidey effortlessly bounces off players heads, spins around bodies, and webs people up. The web rush mechanic is also at play in the combat, and while some may it makes combat too easy, I say it simply adds to the feeling of being Spider-Man; as it allows the player to perform fantastically acrobatic maneuvers with the precision Spider-Man would, without the necessity of having actual Spidey senses. It should be noted that there stealth elements at play in The Amazing Spider-Man, and that the long and short of it is that those stealth sections are well executed and fun to play around with.

All in all, I came away from my time with the newest Spider-Man game very impressed. Everything feels very visceral due to the close-up camera and slick animations for Spider-Man. The controls sometimes feel a bit loose for my liking when it comes to navigation, but all in all I was incredibly satisfied with my time with the wall-crawlers latest video game performance.